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Design and calibration of a wind tunnel with a two dimensional contraction

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Sargison, JE, Walker, GJ and Rossi, R 2004, 'Design and calibration of a wind tunnel with a two dimensional contraction', paper presented at the 15th Australasian Fluid Mechanics Conference, 13-17 December 2004, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.

Abstract

A low speed, open circuit, laboratory wind tunnel has beenredesigned for use in turbine blade cooling experiments. The two dimensional contraction was designed using a sixth order polynomial. This paper outlines the process of designoptimisation, using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tomodel the contraction. The parameters that were varied were the location of the point of inflection and the curvature at the contraction inlet. The optimisation was based on flow uniformity at the working section midplane, prevention of separation in the contraction and minimising the boundary layer thickness at entrance to the working section. Calibration of the wind tunnel after construction has demonstrated the value of the design process and validated the CFD predictions.